When Midnight Plays it's Gentle Music
by shan14
Summary: Peach Series: Nikki contemplates the future


She wakes to a gentle morning; soft, dewy sunlight fluttering through the curtains. It is barely sunrise, she notices, only the faintest slither of light peeping through. Outside the world is waking, cars trundling down the road as the last of the street lamps give way to sun. She can feel the fog of slumber clearing, eyes blinking towards consciousness before becoming aware of a heavy weight settled across her stomach. Glancing down she realises at some stage her clothes have been discarded, a soft blanket is strewn across her legs and tangled in one hand, the other held steady to the shoulders settled across her middle.

There is a shock of dark hair rising and falling against her, its owner turned from her face so that she can run her hand down the length of his back, fingers dancing fluidly across muscle. As she listens carefully she can hear his breathing; can feel him exhale soflty against her flesh, before a small jumble of words spills from his lips, indecipherable to her ears.

"Harry?" she questions soflty, resting her hand upon his unruly locks. He turns his head gently, face pressed to her belly a moment as lips ghost across bare skin, before he is laid watching her, just below the shallow rise and fall of her breast.

"What are you doing?" she murmurs, rubbing her fingertips to his scalp. He smiles softly, stretching against her as his lids flutter between sleep. The rasp of his stubbled cheeks against her brings goose bumps to the exposed flesh, a small shiver traveling up her spine as he grins crookedly. When he speaks it is as soft as the morning she wakes too, his voice washing against her, filling her with warmth.

"Saying hello."

---

_It had been a long day, she thought, curling the blankets to her chest to clutch firmly. A very long day filled with too many questions._

_It was dark outside, the sun having slipped below the horizon hours earlier, leaving only the faint glow of moonlight and the slow thrum of the city to tell of life. There was a lone car trundling slowly down the street, it's headlights illuminating her bedroom alongside the neon lighting of the alarm clock, turned away from the bed in the hopes she'd ignore it in the morning._

_She really wasn't looking forward to mornings anymore, she realised with a sigh._

_The light grew steadily until she realised it had stopped by her apartment, the slight scrape of a metal car door followed by its close, echoing gently through the night._

_Her body tensed slowly, legs curling towards her middle, hands gripping the blanket tight, as the slow creak of her front door was finally heard. There was solid footfall across to the kitchen, the fridge opening with a gasp of cool air and she could imagine the faint glow of his outline peering in at the refrigerator contents. Orange juice or milk she could not decide, only that he unscrewed the plastic lid and drunk greedily, letting out a deep sigh as the cap was resettled. He must have leant against the fridge door, she realised, each sense focused on his movement, as she trembled slightly beneath the covers. Moments later there was a brief scuffle as the fridge beeped incessantly, she heard the faint sounds of swearing, bringing a smile to her reluctant lips, as he attempted to slam the door shut as quietly as possible. He failed, miserably, and she could imagine his panicked glances towards the bedroom._

_He'd be extra quiet now, she noted, and felt the warmth of his actions quell her trembles a moment. There was the dull ache of butterflies at the bottom of her stomach, and her throat felt puffy with unshed tears, yet as she heard him whisper across the floorboards till he was stood outside her door she couldn't help the similar ache to feel his arms wrapped around her, hear his mumbled goodnight against her neck, before he drifted off into a peaceful slumber._

_The door cracked open slightly, there was no light from the hallway, and she could barely make out the shape of him stood there. Thinking her to be asleep he stole across the room on tip toes. There was the clatter of his watch against the table, the rustle of leather as his belt was pulled free and the whisper of clothe against skin as he was stripped of his clothing._

_It was a comfort; some echo of familiarity in a day so foreign from any she had known, and too listen to his midnight ritual had her eyes drooping with sudden exhaustion. It had been a very long day she thought once more, her fingers spreading unconsciously across her middle until she felt herself begin to drop off._

_Some minutes later she was roused gently from her doze. His weight had settled across the other side of the bed, collapsing one side of the mattress slightly so that she felt herself lean towards him. With a stifled yawn and snuffle of exhaustion he laid his phone on the bedside table. She curled up tighter, dreading the moment when the hollow beeping would awake them both, telling of another day dawning when all she wanted was to stay in this moment of silence. He swung his legs up suddenly, jostling her against the mattress once more, before the edges of the blanket where tugged from her grasp, permitting him to join her in the warm cocoon of bed._

_Her breaths had been labored slightly, yet they stilled completely as his fingers clumsily sought her own. They were curled against her stomach, and as his hand traced down the contours of her arm, leaving goose bumps, she barely had time to snatch them away from exposed skin. His hands mirrored hers, fingers brushing her gently, exhales puffed and moistened the skin beneath her ear and his leg came up to push between hers. His chest to her back, he let out a contented sigh, lips hovering above her shoulder before pressing deeply, moistly, to the hollow of her throat, lingering a second, before drawing back only a fraction._

_"Love you," he whispered gently, filling the entire room._

_It was too much, too horrible, she realised suddenly, and let out a terrified sob._

_In an instant his arms had tightened, face was lifted from its nestled spot against her, dark eyes peering down in concern only to realise she was wide awake._

_"Nikki, love, what's wrong?" he asked gently, and she noticed now the exhaustion of his slurred tone. She felt the butterflies intensify, felt guilt at keeping him awake, worried, gnaw away at her conscience. Yet she couldn't keep this from him, not now when he meant so much._

_She curled his fingers tighter across her stomach, pressed down to quell the turmoil inside, and squeezed her eyes shut a moment, all the while his gaze continued to pour across her like waves, mystifying and calming at the same time._

_"Is it about this morning?" he asked quietly, knew whatever she had disappeared to early in the day had unsettled her ridiculously throughout the afternoon. Even when he'd been rushed off to a scene, spent hours covered with police reports and post mortems and evidence 'till staring at the screen alongside Leo and Detective Holland had driven him past exhaustion, even then he'd known deep down that that morning had not been received well._

_"Nikki?"_

_He hated it when she was this silent, and so she shuffled him closer and nodded her head._

_"I had a doctors appointment," she murmured, her voice somewhat lighter, like a small child afraid._

_"And?" he ventured gently, inwardly falling to pieces. Nikki was a strong person, the strongest he'd ever had the privilege to know, and in the past three months he'd learnt her inside out, to the point where he knew that to prompt such a response from her the news must have been horrible._

_"And I need you to tell me something, before we go any further."_

_He paused a moment, slightly baffled by her words, before nodding gently._

_"In the past three months you've made me feel more safe and more loved than anyone I've ever met, did you know that?" she continued on slowly, breath hitching gently, not waiting on a response. "And I love you."_

_His breath caught ridiculously, the sure, passionate admission, not even the first time she'd said it, displayed more of her feeling than any other time that words had been spoken._

_"We've both been pretty messed up though, especially lately, haven't we?" she asked and he thought back to all that had happened in the past year. There was Leo, obviously, the most terrifying, heart wrenching experience he could remember, watching a second father so close to death. Then there had been the revelations of his own family, the affair, the horrifying discovery that the first father, his mother, the adults he'd grown up around, had not been the people he longed them to be. There was the hostage situation, and the bomb, the realisation that life was slipping through his fingers relentlessly and that she wouldn't be around forever heightened by South Africa, and the feeling that their past was catching up._

_"I'm not entirely sure what you mean sweetheart," he teased gently, "it's been a perfectly normal year."_

_She knew he was joking terribly, knew it was a last ditch attempt to lighten the tense mood, and she loved him all the more for the raw emotion she could feel tremble through him. She'd felt the past year almost rip her to shreds and no one understood that feeling more than Harry._

_"My offer of stealing away to a private island is still open," he ventured once more, smiling softly against her hair as she finally trembled with laughter. "Away from guns and post mortems and idiots who think hurting the world will do them any good. We could finally get you away from walking into danger, and Leo wouldn't force us to do any homework."_

_"Would we bring Leo?" she asked suddenly, indulging him his fantasy a moment. "I don't think it would be right not seeing Leo."_

_Harry paused a moment, thinking of all the wonderful things he'd be able to do without Leo present._

_"We could give him a weekend pass," he concluded, nodding his head defiantly. "He and Janet, of course."_

_"We'd actually have to tell them about us," murmured Nikki, flinging herself suddenly back to the real world._

_She felt Harry shuffle against her uncertainly, perhaps rethinking the weekend pass. She was beginning to think he quite enjoyed their secret romance._

_"Would there be doctors on our secret island?" she asked suddenly, and he once more felt a stab of fear reverberate through him._

_"Well I am a trained doctor, and I have a wonderful friend, you may have heard of her, spends a ridiculous amount of time invading my property and personal space, who's also a doctor. Would that do ma'am?"_

_Nikki felt herself giggle softly, despite Harry's deflection, and shook her head._

_"I need a special doctor, apparently," she continued uncertainly._

_A heavy silence descended, wherein Harry's eyes shut tightly and tried to block out the rest of the world._

_"You know how messed up we both are, does that ever make you worry about the future?"_

_"How so?"_

_"When you told me that my children would be lucky to take after me, and after the bomb, when you were talking about the future seeming unreachable. Did you ever stop and think what you wanted from your future?"_

_Harry drummed his fingers gently against her skin, thought back to those moments and wondered if she knew he was referring to them both at those times. He'd often thought that question, though had avoided any question of his past. Perhaps that was why the thought of children both terrified and excited him. On the one hand, he felt the gut-wrenching ache to experience it, on the other his mothers exclamation still stung at him gently. Could he be a father to children with the knowledge of what his own had been? Was it right to put young, innocence through the ache of the temper he had know his father to have, one apparently similar to his own._

_Nikki felt Harry curl tighter against her, in reality he was curling towards himself, and knew at once the thoughts that had plagued her morning where settled deeply across his mind._

_"You see," she ventured slowly, "There's nothing more I want, Harry, than to have a future with you. I want to marry you, and have your children, and live in a house, with a dog and a garden and go walking and catch butterflies with our girls and play football with our boys."_

_At this her voice caught, a sob escaping through breath, before she continued on._

_"But I'm so, so scared that I can't do that."_

_"Because of your father?" he ventured slowly, and damned the man for ever staining her image of love._

_"My father, my mother. No family, South Africa, London, school, running away and having crap friends and a crap time of it all. It's the only childhood I can ever really remember, and I can't bear the thought of putting that on my own child."_

_"Sometimes," began Harry, "Well, most of the time really, I'm absolutely terrified that my mother's correct, and that I am my father, and that any child of mine will have a horrible image, deep down, of their father yelling and shouting and disappearing."_

_Moments stretch into eternity sometimes, and at the moment both Harry and Nikki felt as if the world had stopped turning around them._

_"You were right, we are pretty messed up."_

_"Psychologists dream job, no doubt."_

_There was a pause, in which Harry rubbed his fingers gently to her skin, only realising their position, the doctors appointment, the sudden questions on life and the future and children (children!) in that moment, and felt lightheaded and delirious all at once._

_"How…how long?"_

_"This morning I knew for sure, though I've suspected about a week, maybe a week and a half. I needed to be positive before I told you though. I couldn't bear the thought of this conversation before we had confirmation," she sniffled, laughing sadly a moment._

_"We're having a baby?" he questioned slowly, just to be sure, and felt her nod gently against his chin. He curled himself closer to her stomach, felt his entire body go limp than dizzy than exhausted at the thought of a little speck of someone centimetres from his fingertips._

_"How terrified are you?" he asked suddenly, hoping his voice didn't shake._

_"Pretty much up there with everything else that's messed me around lately, to tell you the truth. I've been sick with nerves all evening. Though, in hindsight, it could be morning sickness."_

_"Trust our child to confuse morning with evening," he murmured gently, and felt sick with giddiness at the first offhand remark about his baby._

_"Technically it is morning," supplied Nikki suddenly, craning her head to watch the slowly blinking neon digits. "Trust our baby to take morning literally as 12:30 am."_

_Harry had the sudden urge to press his face to her stomach, listen intently for any signs, though he knew there were none, that would tell of the little life he'd created. He held himself back though, only barely; feeling that disappearing below the sheets suddenly would not be a welcome move. Nikki had calmed dramatically, now that she knew Harry's fears mirrored hers, and that he hadn't yelled or screamed or stormed out on her at the news, yet she still trembled slightly, and as he gathered her close to him pressing his fingers, entwined with her own, once more to the base of her stomach, he couldn't help that hope she'd calm in the morning._

_"We're really having a baby?"_

_"Yeah Harry," she breathed slowly, gently, exhaustion finally overpowering them both._

_"Are you happy?" he asked quietly._

_There was a long silence, minutes ticked by, and he was sure she'd drifted off to sleep by the time his eyes drooped forwards, only to be jerked awake by her gentle admission._

_"I'm happy."_

_----_

When he wakes in the morning he is pressed steadily to her side. For a blissful moment he brushes his lips across her cheek, sweeps the curls from her face and wonders at the moment. The night before comes crashing down like thunder, like a torrent of rain on a stormy night that no one is expecting, but he feels it like he feels the sun beginning to warm his face, and the emotions that settle then are no longer only fear and nerves, they're an intoxicating combination of joy and terror and longing.

At some point in the night, he remembers, he'd awoke to her jostling restlessly. She'd darted up with a start, mumbled something about chasing butterflies, her long forgotten South African drawl slipping more prominently at such an early hour, and he wonders if she was dreaming of her first home. She'd been fitful with movement so he'd settled her by placing soft kisses across each slip of skin he could find, had made gentle love to her by the neon light of the alarm clock and found it oddly amusing that he'd never felt more enamored than when the green had highlighted her cheeks.

From then she'd slept, pressed bare to his side, the blanket thrown loose across her mid drift, obscuring her stomach from sight. He felt a sudden lose at the barrier, and once more felt the overpowering urge to lye his head to her stomach.

She's asleep, he ponders, and it would only be a second. If she awoke suddenly he could always claim he was reaching across for the blankets. He shuffles so as not to wake her, brushing an ear to her pale skin, lowering himself gently, stretching into a new position on the bed, until finally his stubbled cheek is lying flush to her stomach.

He lies there a long time, eyes closed, breathing quietly, fancying he can hear and feel the growth of the little one just centimeters away. It's silly, he knows, medical school has taught him much, but at the same time he has no doubt he can feel something, and that's enough.

"Hello there," he murmurs finally, piercing his brow as he wonders what one was supposed to say in their first conversation with their child. For a second he wonders if his dad had done this, felt the same way he did now, and the dread rises at the thought that someone so in love could inflict so much pain down the track. He wonders too if Nikki's father had done the same, before blinking terribly, scolding himself for such thoughts.

He is not his father, nor will he become him.

"Can I tell you a story, would you like that? Of course you would, all children like stories, don't they. I could tell you about when I met you're mummy, when she invaded my desk. A common theme throughout our history, I promise, or I could tell you about our adventures, maybe a little censored…or when I took mummy to see the aeroplanes? You don't know what an aeroplane is yet, do you little one. I'd tell you about when I first kissed mummy but the rest of that story isn't too nice. I could tell you about Uncle Leo, of course. Uncle or grandpa? No, uncle Leo, definitely…"

"Harry?"

He stops whispering suddenly, feels Nikki's finger trail up his back before brushing against his forehead, and the unruly locks across his head. He grins slowly, sighing in contentment and the utter relaxation permeating the air surrounding them. He turns from his position, pressing his lips heavily to her stomach, before he is lying facing her, the swell of her breasts rising gently, mesmerising him to this moment and this feeling forever.

He's sleepy again, eyes fluttering slowly, as she questions what he is doing. He smiled softly, stretching, feels her shudder in response as his stubbled cheek rasps across exposed skin. He is grinning now, can't help it really, but the feeling that no matter the problems, not matter the coming battles, that this is a good, brilliant thing, is so strong that he can't imagine stopping smiling any time soon.

When he answers he sees the promise of the future in her eyes; the promise he'd prayed for all those months earlier, stood beneath a bomb that ticked dangerously close to his demise. It's the promise he's almost lost countless times earlier, to other men and other captors, in hospital rooms and unknown woods. It's a promise that says we're going to make it, that we can't possibly screw this up more than our parents did, and that this child is possibly going to be the most spoiled in the history of the Home Office.

Leo, at least, is surely going to kill them and then demand uncleship.

But that's the future, he realises, and this is the present, and by the looks of Nikki's paling face he only has a few more moments to be sweeping and charming and romantic before their child reminds them it is morning and therefore Nikki will have to empty her stomach in the bathroom.

He's pretty sure they're about to raise the most stubborn, mischievous child known to mankind.

She's quirking her eyes at him, the smile dancing across her features bordering on giggles that are his undoing, and so he grins back.

"Saying hello."


End file.
